


it comes with a price

by Muir_Wolf



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: F/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-16
Updated: 2012-10-16
Packaged: 2017-11-16 11:32:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/538980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muir_Wolf/pseuds/Muir_Wolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hawkeye, post-series.  <i>It doesn't seem fair that with every gain there's a loss.  Margaret's smile and Beej's laugh and Potter's hand on his shoulder; he never meant to trade one family for another, never realized he was until two weeks after he was home and the relief of being there began to subside into a familiar ache of homesickness.</i></p><p>[references to war, and the handling of the aftermath]<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	it comes with a price

Hawkeye doesn't talk about Korea. 

Not to his dad, not to his friends, not to the trees that bend too close to his house when he can't sleep at night. Not to the wind that sounds different here, half a world away and not so far at all.

He and B.J. write letters back and forth with the sort of dedication they learned long before they ever met each other, with a sort of desperation to not let the other go. They go through lulls, of course, and sometimes weeks pass without a note, and then a four page letter will arrive in small, cramped, familiar handwriting.

The first few weeks Hawkeye was home, he had to learn to break the habit of rolling over in bed and expecting B.J. to be there, of starting conversation half-awake and expecting an always-companion at his side. Sometimes he brings his notepad out into the grass and sprawls out on the ground, his fingers cramping like they used to when he'd write to his dad.

(It doesn't seem fair that with every gain there's a loss. Margaret's smile and Beej's laugh and Potter's hand on his shoulder; he never meant to trade one family for another, never realized he was until two weeks after he was home and the relief of being there began to subside into a familiar ache of homesickness.)

Margaret was at one temporary address after another in the weeks after everyone left, and he didn't hear from her until five months after he was back. She called him, breathless and a little tipsy, out with girls whose names he didn't recognize (and that in and of itself took him off guard, her world without him). He told her she should come out and see him sometime, told her he was glad to be home, told her it was good to hear from her again, told her, after the phone was back on the receiver and even the dial tone had ended, that he missed her.

Sometimes after he closes up his father's clinic (his someday-future-clinic), he walks aimlessly. There's more space here, or maybe just more safety. He can walk without fear of mines and snipers, can stretch his legs until he's running, until he's flying. Running to or running from, he doesn't know. The sky is clear and blue and as familiar here as it was there, one space flowing into the next. There was never a gun to miss by his side, but sometimes he wakes from a deep sleep to the sound of phantom helicopters overhead.

Radar writes them all monthly updates, and Hawkeye tucks them with his other correspondence into the bottom drawer of his dresser. He has all the books he could ever want to read, now, but those letters are the most worn, the people and places familiar as old friends. The updates on Erin, on Radar's cow and Mildred and all the others. 

Klinger's letters come rarely, and they're always full of tangents and battered by the distance they've traveled. They look familiar for all that, the length between him and home the same that once separated Hawkeye from everything he wanted.

(He doesn't want to go back. He never wants to go back. That doesn't mean he doesn't wake up sometimes, breathless, his hands tangled in his sheets and the desperate urge to make sure they're all all right clawing at his skin. He thinks he never used to worry about them so much when they all lived half on top of each other. He thinks he used to be a better liar. He thinks distance makes the heart grow fonder, and that the dust and the cold will someday fade into tired memories.)

His dad makes breakfast sometimes, and Hawkeye smiles and laughs and watches the changing seasons outside the front window, the way green turns to yellow turns to red. He writes Mulcahy long, tangled letters, things of confusion and love and longing, of wanting and missing and the endless relief that he's home, that they're all home, that safety can be an almost-guarantee. Mulcahy writes back, always, and even when he's just talking about his sister there's something to his written words that soothe the rapid-patter of Hawkeye's heart.

He thinks he should move on. He knows he should move on.

He goes out on dates and has relationships and he sits with his father of an evening and they tell each other the tallest of tall tales, and he learns to ignore the part of him that always is looking for the others. The comparative length of time he's known them is small in the vast scheme of things. Missing them is something that will fade.

He drives down to Boston one weekend to grab dinner with Charles. His dad teases him, given all the stories he's told about Charles, which grow more and more outlandish with each passing day, and he bears it easily, tells himself his dad is right, truly has himself questioning why he's bothering to meet up with him.

Except when he sees Charles, everything else feels diminished, and every moment of every day that they spent together—at each others throats, on opposite sides of the fence, grudging friends, delighted enemies—all of that comes crashing back down, and for the longest moment they just stare at each other. Charles moves first, and puts out his hand; Hawkeye shoves it aside and grabs Charles in a hug. A returned hug, even, though Charles moves slowly and grudgingly to return it, even as something near affection sparkles in his eyes.

Hawkeye does move on. The letters with B.J. continue, but—as with most things—his contact with the others eventually slows. They still keep in contact, but Hawkeye hears from them every few months, instead. The new letters are less worn from rereading, though they still sit placed carefully in his drawer. He picks up the pieces of the life he left behind and throws himself back into it, goes out to the diner and plays poker with his friends and learns to ignore the part of himself that stays settled in Korea with the people that belong to him.

He eventually makes it out to visit Beej and Erin and Peg, and for a moment it's like no time at all has passed. Erin calls him Uncle Hawk right off, and Peg greets him with a warm hug. After dinner, Hawkeye and B.J. stay up talking long into the night, but eventually B.J. stands up and goes to bed, a warm hand cupped on the back of Hawkeye's neck as he says goodnight.

(Distance will always separate all of them. Hawkeye can track it on a map, can sketch in the lines and measure out the miles. He was not made to be a wanderer, but sometimes his heart tugs his feet towards the open road. He has had to learn how to resist it. He has had to learn how to tie himself to a place and let himself be.)

Margaret calls him out of the blue several years after they've all gone home. They've stayed in sporadic touch, and every conversation they've ever had has been full of promises neither of them have kept—stay in touch better, come out to see the other, keep each other updated. (He has a photograph of her kept in the same drawer as the letters—he has a photo of all of them, but he keeps hers in an envelope that he never opens. He doesn't need to look at it because he doesn't miss her anymore than anyone else, except he's taken out the other photographs and turned them over in his hands, run his fingers across their surface. Lies are easy to misplace.)

Margaret calls him, and tells him she's at the airport. Says she hasn't bought a ticket yet, says she could go anywhere, says she could be in Maine in a few hours if—

He says _yes._

He drives out to the airport and his hands are trembling a little on the steering wheel and at the baggage claim he sees her, her hair tied back and her shoulders heavy with exhaustion until she sees him.

The last time he saw her he kissed her goodbye, but this time it's her hand that cups the back of his neck and tugs him down. He writes out hello on the small of her back, loses himself in the warm familiarity of her, in the stutter in his veins and the way she pushes against him.

When they pull apart, her fingers skim across his face, down his shoulder.

She means to say _I missed you,_ but he says it first.

_Finis_


End file.
